ISSIP at PICMET 2013

Last week I attended The Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET) 2013 Conference in San Jose, California, titled “Technology Management in the IT-Driven Services”,where ISSIP created quite a buzz.    In addition to having a booth with significant traffic  for the entire  four days (thanks to our sponsor, IBM with special thanks to Wendy Murphy, IBM Students for Smarter Planet, and ISSIP Advisor), one of our BOD Members was made PICMET Fellow, also gave a keynote, plus ISSIP was featured on panels, and during several conference sessions.

The ISSIP Booth was set up  on Sunday and over the next four days was staffed with the help of four outstanding SJSU students, Reshele Holand, Thi Van, Tarek Massri, and Jasmine Matazz .

The conference started on  Sunday evening, and continued through Thursday afternoon.

ISSIP Panel titled: “Introducing International Society of Service Innovation Professionals” was held on Monday and moderated by Dr. Jim Spohrer, ISSIP BOD Member,  Director, IBM University Program, and Innovation Champion, who began the session by providing a background on why service innovation is an imperative in the 21st century.  I then gave an overview of  ISSIP,the SIGs, Ambassadors Programs, Chapters, Mentorship Program, etc.,  followed by Dr. Yurikow Sawatani, ISSIP Ambassador to Society of Serviceology, who walked the audience through some of ISSIP activities and Service Research in Japan.  Then, Dr. Lou Freund who provided an overview of a  T-Shape Assessment Tool and related research. You may find videos of portions of this session on YouTube.

On Tuesday, Dr. Sawatani presented a paper titled “Creating Knowledge Structure for Service Science“.

On the same day, Dr.  Spohrer was named PICMET Fellow for his “outstanding contributions to the development and growth of Engineering and Technology Management disciplines.”

On  Thursday,  Dr. Spohrer  was one of the two keynote speakers and delivered a very thought-provoking talk titled  “Students for Smarter Planet”.

Following his keynote, Dr. Spohrer  ran a tutorial session titled “Regions 2.0 – A Living-Lab For Management Engineering and Technology Progress”. The session was designed as a workshop and engaged the audience “through a series of  steps to articulate [their] expectations or hopes for what  industry, students and faculty should be doing to create and maintain an upward spiral of capabilities in regions around the world.”   The ideas were captured and the audience was invited to co-create  a related white paper, and  continue to work together perhaps through a future ISSIP SIG. So, stay tuned…

Yassi Moghaddam is the Executive Director of ISSIP.